Salamander

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The stench was terrible, of piss-soaked wool, wet ashes and death, that sweet, foul, clinging odour of burnt flesh, excrement and human hair.

Jean-Louis St-Cyr let his gaze drift over the corpses that lay in two great mounds at what had once been the curtained doorways to the foyer. Some, too, were scattered about the charred, soaked seats that now lay in ruins under ice.

Some had tried repeatedly to force the exit doors-there were corpses there, too, lots of them-trampled again and one could see how that seething mass of terrified humanity had run to those doors and then had tried to escape through the foyer.

‘Louis, how the hell are we supposed to go about sorting this thing out?’ demanded Kohler angrily. Hermann was looking desperate and ill behind a blue polka-dot bandanna that had been soaked in cheap toilet water and disinfectant. Contrary to popular belief, many Bavarians were known to have weak stomachs, this one especially.

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